Modern Classic an EXHIBITION at the WADSWORTH ATHENEUM REVEALS the IMPACT of ANCIENT ART on the WORK of the AMERICAN ART DECO SCULPTOR PAUL MANSHIP
exhibitions exhibitions Modern Classic AN EXHIBITION AT THE WADSWORTH ATHENEUM REVEALS THE IMPACT OF ANCIENT ART ON THE WORK OF THE AMERICAN ART DECO SCULPTOR PAUL MANSHIP. BY JOHN DORFMAN COURTESY OF GERALD PETERS GALLERY. PRIVATE COLLECTION. © ESTATE OF PAUL MANSHIP; WADSWORTH MANSHIP; WADSWORTH PAUL OF ESTATE COLLECTION. © PRIVATE GERALD OF GALLERY. COURTESY PETERS ATHENEUM MUSEUM OF ART, BEQUEST OF HONORA C. ROBERTSON. OF © ESTATE PAUL MANSHIP Clockwise from top left: Assyrian, Nimrud (now Nineveh Province, Iraq), from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Relief panel, 883– 859 BCE, gypsum; Paul Manship, Centaur and Dryad, 1913, cast 1925, bronze; Centaur and Dryad (detail of base), 1913, cast 1925, bronze. AFTER THE demise of the French Acad- ists, and illustrators. During the 1920s it emies and long before the advent of today’s seemed as if the U.S. had entered a sec- vania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia “Classical Realism,” ancient Greek and ond Neoclassical era, embracing architec- and then to the Art Students League in New Roman art exerted an important influence ture, sculpture, and the graphic arts—only York, where he studied with George Bridg- on modernism. One need only this time in a streamlined, modernist form man. In 1909, at the urging of Isidore Konti, think of Picasso’s Minotaurs and suited to the machine age. a Viennese-born sculptor whom he was serv- other reinterpretations of myths One of the major figures of this move- ing as studio assistant, he entered the Rome from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, de ment was the sculptor Paul Manship (1885– Prize competition and won.
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